an unstaged life
why non-conformity is essential to living well in the era of late-stage capitalism
Every time I look on Instagram or anywhere else online I get overwhelmed at how everything, everywhere is staged to make me want it.
Everything is a profit center. All the little original bits of uniqueness have been sucked up by late-stage capitalism and turned into something more expensive and less interesting than its predecessor. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about weddings or sofas or smoked tofu. Everything is manipulated to make you want it, buy it, have it, go into debt for it and throw it away. I suppose this has always been true, but now the system is on steroids trying to keep itself alive.
We stuff ourselves full of the things we think will make us different and special but we’re just a market niche for corporations that produce the next cool thing.
We are market niche fodder in a very hungry system.
Living an un-staged, atypical life isn’t easy because multinationals will manipulate and shove us down their own profit path if we don’t pay very close attention to our own actions.
I graduated with a degree in marketing in the early eighties and tried to kill off my neurodivergence by marrying a person with whom I was incompatible. I became an insurance broker and we bought a condo. I went all in for that American Dream. And it wasn’t long before I was sidelined with migraine headaches and caught in an eating disorder that kept me in a size six and chronic pain.
I wasn’t alone in trying to make the American dream work.
The roots of fast tracking into a college educated, suburban lifestyle lie in post-World War II / Cold War America. People were encouraged to work towards a college education, a good salary, a mortgage, suburban home ownership, children, upward mobility, and conformity. The entire post war economy was based on these metrics plus the vast build up of the military-industrial nuclear complex during the fifties and sixties.
Today, we keep running on that same track, thinking it will lead to the promised ideal of moderate wealth and respectability. Instead it’s led us to nationwide burn out, poor education and even poorer health metrics, spiralling housing costs and eroding standards of living.
And no time at all to find out who we are or what makes us happy.
The only metric that continues to tick upward is economic growth, but with an eroding standard of living. Instead of money circulating into the general economy and improving people’s lives, it’s not coming back to the middle class at all. It’s staying concentrated in the hands of globalist elite.
Here’s the choice: be part of the real life hunger game, or consciously choose how you want to live and stick to it.
My desire to survive overcame my need to please everyone and after two years I left my marriage, opting instead for a dark, damp studio apartment in the back of a post office in an artist enclave over the beautiful three bedroom condo I walked out of.
Armed with a few pieces of furniture, a new bike and a yogurt maker, I worked at a health food store, became a vegetarian and learned how to make tempeh from scratch. Time brought real healing, long distance bicycling, loose cotton skirts and organic vegetables from local farms. I learned to love food again. IKEA hired me and I started to travel, found true love and went on to live on both coasts and in Germany and Italy, and began to develop my niches in writing, art, ceramics, and natural living.
It’s not easy to consciously choose our own independent and creative path, especially when it conflicts with the expectations of those we love. But in the end, we owe it to ourselves to live our truth. Nothing in life is ever easy, but it’s easier to work hard at a path you’ve chosen for yourself than trying to fit in to a life you weren’t meant to live. And those who really love us will eventually realise it and support our decision to embrace who we really are.
Let’s lead with our hearts and the desire to make the world better through our actions, and allow others to live free of judgement.
This kind of individuality takes strength, courage and recognises the importance of interdependence with others in creating a sustainable lifestyle that will support and protect our planet for the next generations.
When we’re able to express our individual gifts and embrace those gifts in others, we can create a better society. Social democracies here in Europe, while not in any way problem-free, certainly provide a better and more stable framework for exploring possibility than end-stage capitalism, in which there is no hope for the situation to improve. The problems have become unsolvable. Best selling author Kirsten Powers writes eloquently about the American obsession with self help books (another industry created around a market niche):
Each time I look at the Publishers Weekly bestseller list, I am struck by how Americans are always seeking guidance on how to do the most basic human things: follow a healthy diet, exercise, have friends, or be happy.
Yet, no matter how many of these books are printed and read, Americans still aren't happy, healthy, connected, or anything else that they keep reading about. I was once a great consumer of this genre, and I recently reflected on how much time I wasted trying to make my life work by nibbling around the edges of the problem.
Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, headaches, digestive problems, ear infection, anxiety, depression - there are a million ways our bodies tell us something’s seriously wrong. And this is why, in a society that makes us sick, the self-help industry is so huge. Because it’s easier to believe in a book or a diet than to accept the idea of revamping life in its entirety.
The notion that our ideal way of living doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s feels novel and almost dangerous. Change is scary and uncertain. But it’s also the only way to develop and grow. Deep inside, we know full well when we’re not following our own path. We sense it, even if we don’t allow ourselves to act on it. The older we get, the more we sense it, and the more difficult it becomes to not act on what we know to be true. But some of us are really good at denial, because we think it’s easier. But denial is a thief. It robs us of the chance to be ourselves, leaving us miserable.
We are each special and gifted in ways that the planet absolutely needs. But the only special we are is the special we do. It’s not about how we think or how we’d like things to be. If we want things to be better, we have to act to make things better. The people who have changed this planet for the better have acted on what they know to be their truth.
None of us are going to be able to buy our way into having an extraordinary life - if there’s one thing that late-stage capitalism has shown is that having money and spending it on stuff is pretty much boring as hell, wastes resources and creates garbage. We’re not going to purchase our way to special-dom. We have to un-buy our way there. We have to un-ravel the knots that keep us from living the best we can for ourselves and for those we love.
Let’s un-stage our lives and become the interesting, unique, amazing, accomplished, creative creatures we were born to be.
I think about the pictures of your pottery studio in Italy (I believe..?) so often that it's becoming harder and harder *not* to un-stage my life!
Wondering if there's a little community of ex-pats here on Substack who opted for a different life style elsewhere? Also for the data, have a look at the U.S. recent drop in the measure on the GHI (Gross Happiness Index) and then consider all that's contributing to the decline, individually and collectiively. I am wading my way through "Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" by two Princeton economists, Brits by the way. Not surprised by their findings and looking forward to their suggestions and recommendations. They liken the situation to the climate crisis, somewhat silent and out of our immediate sight with some dire consequences.